


The Bride of Mole Man

by Werelibrarian



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Foggy is so done, M/M, Sewers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 09:35:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12129609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werelibrarian/pseuds/Werelibrarian
Summary: "I really wish someone would comesave me," Matt says, and the tone of his voice is past "slightly pointed" and nearing "very stabby" so Foggy ducks out from behind the wall."Intruder!" Mole Man hisses, sweeping his cape around him like a Bela Lugosi impersonator."Hi," Foggy says lamely, "I'm here to pick up my husband, are you about done with him?"





	The Bride of Mole Man

When the phone rings, Foggy has to dig through a carpet of paper to find the source of the noise. "Hah, found you! I mean, yeah? I mean. Nelson and Murdock, how can I help you?"

"Uh," says Matt.

"Oh _God_ I know that tone of voice," says Foggy, sitting back heavily in his chair. "What's happened? You sound like you're at the bottom of a well."

"I am."

Foggy puts his forehead down on the desk. "For real?"

"Frankly, I'm surprised I'm getting signal. I'm in the sewers..."

Blindly, one-handedly, Foggy gropes for the bulk-sized bottle of Tums in his desk drawer. "Of course you are."

"You know those jewellery store robberies downtown? The ones with the tunnels?"

"Yeah?"

"I found out who did it."

"Uh-huh."

"And then they found me. He. He found me." Foggy could hear Matt chewing his lip, the way he did when he was embarrassed. "Mole Man. And when I say found I mean he shoved me in a sack."

Foggy dry-swallows three antacids and makes a note to force Matt to sleep more if he's getting snuck up on by a little mouth-breather like Mole Man. "Uh-huh. Who do you want me to call? Luke? Jess? _Frank?_ "

Matt's silence is startled. "You have the Punisher's number? Wait, no, never mind that. I can't talk long, he'll be back soon."

"Why can't you just climb out of the sewer?"

"He tied me to a bed."

Foggy rockets to standing. "He did WHAT?"

"Just by my ankle!" Matt yells.

”I can’t believe this. Are you defending him?" Foggy asks, collapsing into the chair again and digging his fingertips into his eye sockets.

"No. He's just—a little bit more pathetic than I remember. And."

Foggy pops another Tums based solely on the way Matt draws out the word. "And what, Matt?"

"He says he's going to marry me."

Maybe if Foggy digs hard enough he'll put his arm all the way through his brain and then he won't have to deal with shit like this anymore. "Matt, just break the rope. Or when he gets back, hit him in the head and then break the rope."

"I can't..."

"Why not?"

"Foggy, he's gone to buy a top hat! He gave me a flower made out of a diaper—"

"What the fuck, _ew_."

"—he invited all his cousins. Who are moles, Foggy, _actual_ moles."

"What do you want me to do, Matt? Register you crazy kids at Macy's?"

"I need you to get my dad's wedding ring."

A mist of rage and frustration descends over Foggy's vision and his arm nearly rears back to throw the phone against the wall before it actually gets any orders from his brain. On Matt's list of Stupid Things I Have Done/Am Currently Doing, actually _marrying_ the Mole Man because he feels _bad_ for him ranks so high up Foggy is going to have to tape another piece of paper to it.

"ARE YOU FUCKING—" he roars.

"Get it and put it on!" Matt yells back.

"...huh?"

"Oh crap, he's back. Just come get me, I'm under Battery Park."

Matt hangs up, but not before Foggy hears him utter a pained "heyyyy you're back."

***

Three hours later, Foggy's got Jack Murdock's wedding ring in his pocket and a pair of rubber boots on his feet, and he's way more pleased about the second thing because he's up to his ankles in sewage.

Holding his nose and straining to hear in the echoing tunnels, Foggy sloshes along till he catches the sound of someone chattering in a wheezy, excited, rat-like voice. He peers around a wall into a cavernous juncture of tunnels.

"...with your beauty and my genius we will rule the underworld!!" Mole Man cries triumphantly, clawing at the air like he's about to bring Frankenstein's monster to life. He's about as tall as Matt is when he's sitting down, hunchbacked, and utterly coated with dirt. On his head is a pristine black top hat.

"Uh, about that," Matt says, his hands folded together politely in his lap. A rope—so thin and flimsy Foggy could probably snap it with his bare hands—tethers Matt's ankle to the bedpost of a bed that looks like it's been dragged out of a landfill. "I can't marry you, Harvey. I'm—already married."

With his back pressed to the slimy cement, Foggy sighs like he's channelling Claire Temple, fumbles for the ring, and shoves it onto his finger. "You owe me so hard for this," he mutters.

"We're very much in love," Matt goes on in a slightly pointed voice that makes it clear he heard what Foggy just grumbled.

"No could can love you as I can," sighs Mole Man. "We are the same, you and me. Children of shadows—the shunned, the outcasts—you could never be happy with someone who doesn't understand what it's like to be," he reaches for Matt, the gesture oddly yearning, "creatures of the dark."

"I'm having deja vu," Matt said grimly, evading Mole Man's touch while trying not to give the impression he's leaning away.

"I could love you like you deserve," Mole Man goes on, "you could be my dark...Queen? Muse? First gentleman?" he makes a frustrated hissing sound, "we'll figure out the titles later."

"I really wish someone would come _save me_ ," Matt says, and the tone of his voice is past "slightly pointed" and nearing "very stabby" so Foggy ducks out from behind the wall.

"Intruder!" Mole Man hisses, sweeping his cape around him like a Bela Lugosi impersonator.

"Hi," Foggy says lamely, "I'm here to pick up my husband, are you about done with him?"

Matt palms his mask. Mole Man sniffs at Foggy, pokes him with his cane a few times, and then whips around to glare incredulously at Matt through the slits in his mole-mask. "You married a human?" he wheezes, "he's just a—he's not even super!"

Matt sniffs. "Eh, he's alright."

"Thanks, _babe_ ," Foggy says drily.

"No problem, _honey_."

Mole Man makes an aggrieved noise. "You won't take him from me. He's mine," he snarls.

"You can keep him," Foggy mutters under his breath, and the lower half of Matt's face goes tight and sulky.

"You see, you see?! He doesn't love you! All he sees when he looks at us is something beneath him," Mole Man pleads, approaching Matt ingratiatingly, "but we know—this world could be a paradise, a treasure trove. I will bring you the jewels of the underground, every precious thing people like him" an angry claw in Foggy's direction, "throw away. Together we could conquer the world, and you would have everything you ever wanted..." he reaches for Matt's cheek again.

"Oh, gee…” Matt mumbles, again dodging while trying to stay still.

”First of all, back the hell up," Foggy hears someone say, and blinks when he realizes it's him.

Mole Man hisses like a cat at Foggy, but turns a honey-sweet voice on Matt. "What have you ever gotten from him but a leash for your darker instincts?" he asks, and Foggy's completely taken aback by the insight, "when you come home, who does he talk to? You? Or that slow, safe, _unremarkable_ human you play in the light?"

"You were never unremarkable," Foggy cuts in. Matt would never actually give up his life to become a super-villain's bride, but Mole Man's smarter than Foggy gave him credit for, and something in his icky stalker rhetoric is beginning to twist Matt's insecurity dials. "Not to me."

"Platitudes," scoffs Mole Man. "What could he ever do for you, that—that—surface-dweller!"

"Do you remember the semester I took Punjabi?" Foggy says suddenly.

Mole Man's head tilts at the non-sequitur. “What?”

Foggy's not sure where he's going with this, but his mind takes the image of Daredevil sitting on Mole Man's rat-chewed wedding bed and prisms it through his memory, and suddenly there's Matt, 18 years old, sitting on his bed at Columbia, his ears going pink as Foggy bunts a clumsy compliment his way. "It wasn't one floor down from your English class, buddy. It was across campus."

"Okay?"

"And I was late every time because I wanted to walk you to class. You'd just gotten comfortable holding my arm by then, and I...I couldn't pass it up." he shrugged.

"Is _that_ why you failed Punjabi?" Matt demands.

"Pretty much." Foggy shrugs again. "And all those muffins my mom made for you during exams? I made them."

"Oh my god, why didn't you tell me?" Matt's mouth goes soft, and Foggy knows he's remembering the 2 A.M tea-parties that kept them from going completely doolally from studying. Every week they had a new flavour of muffin, but what was a constant was Matt sipping black coffee from the OBJECTION mug, Foggy chugging red-bull from OVERRULED.

"But, but, what are muffins compared to unlimited power?" wheedles Mole Man, but the tide—swirling around Foggy's feet and full of actual turds—is shifting.

"You don't have to—" Foggy clears his throat, Matt's father's wedding ring like the lasso of truth around his finger, "—love me if you don't any more, but I'm not letting _him_ convince you that I would _ever_ change who you are, or that I don't—" Deep breath, Nelson, "—love you. All of you."

"He may think he loves you but our love will hold the underworld in thrall!" Mole Man says desperately, "I will make you a subterranean demi-god!"

But Foggy's on a roll now, staring at Matt, his heart feeling like a runaway subway car. "He probably will, but. I fall asleep hearing your voice. "Matt smothers a startled, heartsore sound with his glove. "And your smile, sweetheart, it's all I need to feel happy."

"Weak, _childish_ emotion! This is not love!" Mole Man's top hat tumbles to floor with a splash.

"Shut up! I left my job for him," Foggy raises his voice over Mole Man's derision, "and I'll do it again. I'll follow him anywhere. I'll follow him down here if I have to. I'll break the law for him. I'll _make_ new laws for him. I've taken on biker gangs and cops and corporate lawyers for him and you? Aren't even a ping on my radar. "

"I've been protecting him for ten years and I'll do it for ten, twenty, _a hundred_ more." Foggy squares his shoulders and holds up his left hand, making his ring glint in the dim light. "If you want to marry him, _Harvey_ , you're too late. I've already done it."

A tear slips down Mole Man's cheek, washing away a layer of encrusted sewer-dirt to expose a lower layer of sewer-dirt.

"...I love you, Daredevil," Mole Man whispers, half to himself, "but it seems I didn't understand what that meant."

"Look, I'm sorry, but maybe you should get to know someone before you whisk them off to your lair. It might go better for you that way." Foggy says, suddenly and reluctantly feeling bad for the little villain. "And, you know, actually _ask_ them."

"Foggy," Matt says, pulling at the end of his tether. Swearing under his breath, he tugs on his leg and the rope snaps. "Can we go now?"

"Oh. Sure, let's get out of here," Foggy says, feeling off balance after his outburst. He does what he always does when he feels emotionally stripped down to his boxers: joke. “You're paying for my dry-cleaning, though."

"Sure sweetheart," Matt says, and Foggy huffs an incredulous laugh.

He holds out his hand—his left one—and Matt takes it easily. It's even easier for Foggy to let himself be reeled in for Matt to press a soft kiss to his mouth.

"Marry me," Foggy blurts.

"According to you, I already did." Matt murmurs back as they leave.

"Call me," Mole Man calls after Matt sadly.

"Let's not tell—" Matt starts, as they sploosh out of his lair, "Jessica and Luke and Danny—they don't have to know that..."

"That you almost ended up the Empress of the New York City sewer system?" Foggy snickers.

Matt kicks water ruefully. "Yeah, basically," he sighs. He still hasn't let go of Foggy's hand, and when Foggy looks down and sees Jack's ring peek out from between the black kevlar of Matt’s gloves, it feels _right_ in a way he doesn't fully have words for, but…

Foggy turns Matt's chin and kisses him lightly as the sewers drip filth— plink plink plink—all around them. "Our secret," he promises.

 


End file.
